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The Dolphins have landed a big fish by sinking the Storm at Suncorp Stadium to notch arguably their best win in their short NRL history.
Kristian Woolf’s side looked like they were going to be yet another notch on Melbourne’s belt after the visitors went 16-0 up inside the first 20 minutes but the NRL’s newest side ran in seven straight tries to upset the premiership favourites 42-22.
Canterbury have perhaps taken over from Melbourne as the team to beat after they vanquished South Sydney 32-0 in the earlier Good Friday fixture at Accor Stadium.
Rabbitohs forward Jai Arrow was in strife over a fan altercation after the loss before telling the Sydney Morning Herald that “passion got the better of me”. Souths coach Wayne Bennett joked that “it would have been good had he got upset on the football field”.
With more than 65,000 fans, mostly of the blue and white variety, packing out Accor Stadium, the Bulldogs bandwagon is overflowing.
Cameron Ciraldo needs to now temper the hype that is engulfing Belmore for the first time in more than a decade with the unbeaten competition leaders off to a 6-0 start for the first time since their maiden premiership season of 1938.
Surprisingly, their shut-out of Souths on the back of a 20-0 demolition of Newcastle before their bye, was the first time in club history that the Dogs have held opponents to nil in back-to-back outings.
The Dogs led 20-0 at half-time and kicked on with tries to Jacob Preston and Bronson Xerri in the second half to keep their unbeaten record intact.
Forwards Josh Curran, Max King and Sitili Tupouniua touched down during the dominant first half.
“It was a proud day to be a Bulldog,” Ciraldo said.
“It’s funny, keeping a lid on it, you hear that all the time once you win one, then two in a row. It’s important we celebrate this with our family. What I know about these guys is on Sunday they’ll turn up for work and forget about the game and try to get better.
“We’re defending really well. We can definitely execute better in attack. Long way (to go).”
The win could come at a cost with Fijian forward Viliame Kikau (high contact) placed on report in his comeback game from a knee injury.
Josh Curran celebrates a try. (Photo by Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)
“They were much better than we were. They turned up, we weren’t at our best.”
And with that, Wayne Bennett summed up in a few words exactly what happened at Accor Stadium.
He went on to add that they beat themselves but even if Souths were at their best, they probably still wouldn’t have had enough strikepower to match the Dogs. They were simply outclassed.
The Bunnies have lost two straight after a promising start to the year and have dropped to a 4-3 record heading into next Friday’s trip to Melbourne to face the Storm.
And they could be without veteran Euan Aitken (hip-drop tackle) and prop Tevita Tatola (crusher tackle) after they were placed on report by referee Grant Atkins.
After the Storm ran in three tries in the space of 20 minutes to shoot out to a 16-0 lead, you could have forgiven the Dolphins for thinking they were about to suffer the same fate as Parramatta, Manly and the Warriors, who have copped floggings from the Melbourne juggernaut this season.
Kane Bradley, Xavier Coates and Ryan Papenhuyzen scooted across the stripe for tries that looked more like training drills than a true NRL contest.
Storm record-breaker Cameron Smith on Nine commentary said the Dolphins had no other option other than to bite down hard on their mouthguard and grind their way back into the contest.
The unlikely figure of bench prop Josh Kerr, in his 100th NRL game, turned the tide with a try after backing up his own offload and Jack Bostock touched down to cut the gap to four at half-time.
Even after veteran forward Felise Kaufusi (knee) and hooker Max Plath (foot) limped off, the Dolphins maintained their momentum.
Three more tries to bench forwards – Ray Stone either side of one to Connelly Lemuelu – put the Dolphins 30-16 up before Kodi Nikorima steamed onto an Isaiya Katoa grubber to turn the dream of a Dolphins comeback win into a reality.
And they weren’t done with – Herbie Farnworth swan-dived next to the cornerpost after a Katoa bomb detonated on Bradley.
Kurt Donoghoe and Trent Loeiro ended the match in the sin bin after a late scuffle as the Dolphins took great joy in roughing up the Storm to sprinkle salt on the scoreboard wounds they had inflicted.
After losing their first four matches under Woolf, they have racked up three on the trot to firmly re-enter the playoff race.
Kodi Nikorima is in the twilight of his career and many Dolphins fans would probably be happy if he was the bench utility rather than their starting five-eighth.
He will never be a chief playmaker but he has a tendency to sit back too much, leaving too much of a burden on young halfback Isaiya Katoa.
But the 31-year-old Kiwi international played his role to perfection against the Storm to orchestrate the Dolphins’ remarkable comeback.
Nikorima scored a try and set up another to complement Katoa’s star turn with the Tongan tyro, 10 years his junior, creating three four-pointers to reinforce his reputation as one of the NRL’s most promising young playmakers.
Storm skipper Harry Grant was a midweek withdrawal from this match after suffering a hamstring injury at training and the prognosis is not good for the Storm or Queensland.
“He’s had a scan. They are thinking four to six weeks,” Storm coach Bellamy told Fox League before the Dolphins clash.
“It was pretty innocuous there yesterday at training. We were doing our captain’s run. Pretty early on he just sort of pulled up lame. He was pretty sore afterwards so he went for a scan and it unfortunately wasn’t great news.”
He will be racing the clock to be right for Origin I at the same venue on May 28.
If he is not able to prove his fitness in time, Broncos veteran Ben Hunt will likely start at hooker with Tom Dearden or Canterbury’s Red Mahoney acting as his back-up on the bench.
Storm centre Jack Howarth had been mentioned recently by Slater as a potential Maroons bolter but he left the field midway through the first half of the loss to the Dolphins with a dislocated shoulder so he is likely to be missing time over the next month at least.
“He will be an extended time but if he has an operation it will be the season I think,” Bellamy said. “I think he will try and rehab it and go from there. I don’t think it was out for too long so that is a plus, but we will see what the medical team think.
“They are thinking to rehab it and try him again. Jack has been in really good form the last couple of weeks and made improvements in his game. He was looking likely out there tonight too but unfortunately that is a bad injury for him.”
The experiment of moving Latrell Mitchell to five-eighth has officially been canned after he was missing in action at Accor Stadium on Friday.
Mitchell did not much of anything as Cody Walker’s halves partner and Wayne Bennett shunted him back out to the centres in the second half
Whether he felt out of position or wasn’t on his game, Mitchell too often just shuffled the ball wide without making any impact for the Bunnies.
Or he booted the ball downfield, making 421 metres from his 10 kicks, but was again ineffective in that department.
He made just one run during a lethargic first half. Dylan Brown-esque.
Mitchell can be a match-winner closer to the action, as he showed a fortnight ago with the money ball for the clinching try against the Roosters, but when he doesn’t get involved, his talent goes to waste.
And with Souths failing to make a line break all game against the tenacious Canterbury defensive line, the Rabbitohs could have done with even a litte Latrell magic.
When asked if that was the end of Mitchell in the halves, Bennett replied: “I wouldn’t say that. I don’t have the luxury of picking players in the position that they may want to play, I’ve just got to get the best team on the field.”